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Dalai Lama was leading his country during the rigors of World War II, he was in Beijing for a year in 1954 he was up against Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai from the time that he was fifteen. So he's no newcomer or naive when it comes to politics.

Pico Iyer

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Pico Iyer
Age: 67
Born: 1957
Born: February 11
Essayist
Novelist
Siddharth Pico Raghavan Iyer
War
Dalai
Comes
Rigor
Country
Lama
Years
Naive
Rigors
Time
Fifteen
Newcomer
World
Leading
Newcomers
Politics
Mao
Year
Beijing

More quotes by Pico Iyer

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I think of the Dalai Lama as a doctor of the mind offering medicine and specific counsel and cures in the way a great doctor would.
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The central paradox of the machines that have made our lives so much brighter, quicker, longer and healthier is that they cannot teach us how to make the best use of them the information revolution came without an instruction manual.
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The Dalai Lama, these days, encourages Westerners not to take up Buddhism, partly because he feels that our roots are deep in other traditions, and we should go deeper into our own traditions rather than just acquiring the surfaces of others.
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Travel is not really about leaving our homes, but leaving our habits.
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The more ways we have to connect, the more many of us seem desperate to unplug.
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So travel for me is an act of discovery and of responsibility as well a grand adventure and a constant liberation.
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Most of us who have been lucky enough to hear, read and see the Dalai Lama, often come away thinking, What a kind, inspiring and golden human being! That is true, but I think it does him an injustice.
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Destinations are less important than the spirit you bring to them.
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Dalai Lama is very interested in learning from and sharing tips with people in other traditions, but he always stresses that we shouldn't underestimate the important differences between them.
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I think people like me are in a relatively privileged position because we have to some extent chosen to live in foreign places. I would always make the distinction between those who are exiles in terms of being thrown out of the place they want to be, and others who are exiles in terms of going toward a place they would rather be.
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Every day there are small moments when we have a choice: will we take in more stuff, or just clear our minds out for a bit?
Pico Iyer
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I think Dalai Lama efforts have been heroic.
Pico Iyer
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There's so much visible stuff around now, we're tempted to forget that it's usually the invisible that matters most.
Pico Iyer
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The beauty of being foreign is that it snaps you awake.
Pico Iyer
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And it’s only by going nowhere - by sitting still or letting my mind relax - that I find that the thoughts that come to me unbidden are far fresher and more imaginative than the ones I consciously seek out.
Pico Iyer
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The Dalai Lama says Tibet and the modern world can engage in a conversation perhaps Tibet has something to share with the rest of us based on its researches into mind, and we have a lot that we can share with Tibet.
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Silence is something more than just a pause it is that enchanted place where space is cleared and time is stayed and the horizon itself expands. In silence, we often say, we can hear ourselves think but what is truer to say is that in silence we can hear ourselves not think....In silence, we might better say, we can hear someone else think.
Pico Iyer
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Just as there are many more Californians now to be found in the temples of Kyoto or the villages of Bali or the mountains of the Himalayas than ever before, what is also exciting is that one can just go downtown Santa Barbara and find ayurvedic medicine, Thai restaurants, and Japanese cars in abundance.
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I remember many years ago, I asked [Dalai Lama] about exile and he said: Well, exile is good because it's brought me and my people closer to reality, and reality is almost a shrine before which he sits. Exile brings us up against the wall and forces us to rise to the challenge of the moment.
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Some people will always ground themselves very strongly in a piece of soil, a grandmother's property, a tiny plot of land, and that's great. But in the Age of Movement, there's no question that the number of people who don't - or can't - is growing exponentially.
Pico Iyer